The one great thing you can say about the product development methodology is that it provides an
unambiguous structure with clearly defined milestones. The meaning of alpha test, beta test, and
first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers. If the product fails to work, you stop and fix
it. In stark contrast, sales and marketing activities before first customer ship are adhoc, fuzzy, and
absent measurable, concrete objectives. They lack any way to stop and fix what’s broken (or even to
know if it is broken, or how to stop at all).